tin man & scarecrow
by MarginalMary
Summary: I owe you nothing.


I do not own bleach.

Enjoy!

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**collage 4: tin man & scarecrow**

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_The scarecrow says to the tin man, "Where is your heart?" To which, the tin man replies, "the same place you left your brain."_

I hear him say to the guard, "2 minutes. Don't tell anyone I was here." There is grim business in his tone.

The Deposed One has come seeking blood.

I throw the green orb up and down, up and down, disappointed that I can't show him the face he comes to kill.

From hairline to chin, a scar runs through my left eye and pulls the corner of my mouth forever downward.

Smirking and squinting are habits of my past, trademarks sacrificed to the twice damned war. Then again, smiling so wide I cannot see and butchering my speech - grinning and sinning - seems a poor way to die.

Besides, there is nothing quite like dramatic change to liven the mood. Nothing quite like the shock of reality to discomfit the Unseated One.

I throw the green sphere up and down, just listening as his footsteps grow near, the tempo a fit of stops and starts. The man never did enjoy the death blow.

"Stand up, Ichimaru," he spits, his rage as transparent as his personality. His voice holds nothing back. His venom bounces off the white walls, a din of malice which reminds me of home.

I take the time to throw the green orb up and down one more time—not so much unwillingness to deal with him as unwillingness to quit my bland game. Then, I look up slowly, taking in everything from the reed sandals to the haiori he has not worn in a hundred years. At hip level, I find his zanpakuto pointed at me, the tip about a foot from my nose. My eye drifts still upward, and I see his face, fevered lunacy polluting every feature.

It is a strange thing, the inclination of the past to invade the present.

"Taicho, it's a bit disconcerting," I opine, "to see you in this get-up without the flowing mane."

Shinji Hirako raises a brow despite himself, wrong footed, no doubt, by my open eye and lack of twang. My comment finally registering, the man inhales sharply. I would almost call it a gasp.

His hand twitching, Taicho's aura pulses yellow. "Do not," he orders, "call me that." The tenuous control to which he clings slips away as black ink slips into the whites of his eyes; the hollow thirsts for vengeance. "You lost the right long before you lost the rank."

"But you are my captain, Hirako-taicho," I argue, "You led me all the way here."

I scrutinize his face because I'm morbid. Morbidly curious. I want to watch as I break him.

I gesture to his indefensibly white mantle. "You're back," I explain.

Taicho shakes his head violently, dispelling my words and the implication therein. "I said stand up."

"Will standing up feed your delusion that this is justice—that this is fair play?" I turn toward the opening of the Repentance Tower because I know he will not answer. "2 minutes..," I note, "Not a very efficient assassin, are you?"

"Fucking stand up, Ichimaru, or I will kill you where you sit. I have been waiting too long for this," he warns, the sound reverberating through space.

Of course, I decline the invitation to 'fucking stand up.' I am sympathetic to his cause, but aiding my own execution is well beyond my sensibilities. "You know, I thought you might come," I yawn, ignoring the gleaming sword.

Instead, I consider the green globe in my hand, spinning it on the tip of my index finger.

"You know why I'm here," Taicho whispers, low and lethal, "You betrayed the Fifth. Helped that mother fucker hollowfy us." Then, he pauses, my greatest offense too much for mere words to convey. Persevering, Taicho euphemizes, "You _stole_ someone from me," his zanpakuto vibrating imperceptibly as the ire builds.

"So, stand up."

I ponder the accusations, the last of which seeming rather weak. I cut Hiyori in half. 'Stole someone' doesn't quite encapsulate the horror. I'm nearly offended.

"Do you think I will stand because you tell me to?" I ask thoughtfully, "It has been a long time since I have taken orders from _you_."

Hirako-taicho says nothing but raises his blade a little higher.

"Oh, I know why you're here," I assure him, "dicing up friends… that sort of thing tends to provoke the killing intent." I half smile, reminiscing, "even in ridiculous creatures like Momo Hinamori."

His hand quakes, the sword glows, and I revel in the chaos of the moment.

Staring up at him, my ceil eye apathetic, my expression ambivalent, I whisper, "Makes me wonder why I'm still alive." I glance at his weapon meaningfully.

Then, I laugh, "You do so love to hear yourself speak. I recall a similar speech you made for the dearly departed, Aizen Sousuke. What an odd man you are, Taicho."

The green ball in my hand threatens to break as my memories break the surface of my numb brain. "Fear," I tell Taicho, "is a cunning beast. Aizen feared a great many things—I suppose oppressors often do. So you were right. Aizen-taicho feared you and rightly so. You were quite magnificent at the end."

I close my eye, listening to Taicho's labored breathing. "But if you expect the same from me, you will find only disappointment here."

For once, I am in the mood to grin, but I lack the ability. How ironic.

Regrouping, Taicho informs me, "She's dead because of you. Hiyori wasn't a threat; she was a peripheral irritant. There were so many others—so many other targets, but you cut her down for your own sick amusement. Just a mind game."

I shake my head ruefully, bemused. "Others? So, you'd sic me on anyone but precious Hiyori. You're a _bad_ man. I'm beginning to like you, Taicho, because that's the sort of logic I can respect."

He bristles, knowing I am right, finding the implicit conflict between the greater good and private interest too much for his delicate state of mind—somewhere between raving mad and startlingly sane. The difference between drowning in the collective rationale and knowing yourself intimately.

It's fun to watch, but I can do one better, "Be thankful, Taicho. Chopping her in half was not part of the original plan. Or, at least…_ I_ wasn't suppose to chop her in half." I watch the black ink spread and his pupils contract. If nothing else, Shinji Hirako is an intuitive man. He already knows where I'm headed.

I was not the one destined to kill Hiyori, but I did it anyway. I wanted to wreck my first captain's world—to give him a taste of my hell.

The hell his disregard created.

I continue, enchanted by the tortured expression on his face, "_You_ were suppose to chop her in half." I smirk as best as I am able, adding detail to the nightmare, "Aizen's illusions were tricky, tricky. And, now that you know, I have to ask—would you have committed suicide?"

Hirako-taicho goes rigid. His aura congeals to solid gold.

And yet, there is only silence—the soundless howl of desperate fury against Aizen who is already dead, far beyond reach, never to be killed again.

"Don't fret, Taicho," I smooth, "That feeling—hatred so potent it's a world all its own—you will learn to endure it."

I wear a mocking expression as I throw the green sphere up and down because I know that hate. I have lived that hate, a cancerous fire the ravages self and other indiscriminately. I have been torn down to be built up.

Torn. Built. Torn. Rebuilt. Torn again.

Over and over, a new version of myself emerged, each one less like the boy I was. The scrappy youth who ran off to the academy, trying so hard to earn the means to keep my Ran alive.

And this man, my taicho, started it all—the sick and twisted cycle began with his neglect. So in this moment, I will cut him, speaking rusty truths which slice deeper than acerbic lies.

Taking full advantage of his shell shock, I clear my throat, speaking in professional tones, "There is the noble's way, of course—the achievements of the subordinate is the honor of the superior. Their faults; his dishonor." I peer, stone faced, at the man who taught me hate, disillusioning him, "But you and I—we're Rukon brats, the progeny of trysts in piss soaked alleys. We are the children of tramps and thieves. Our honor is survival, nothing more."

"Taicho, I killed so many, 'stole so many_,'_ but you're the only one here." I reach out to flick the blade, pricking my finger, caring not a whit.

"Always so dramatic," I sigh, my voice feather light, supple wine, "So self centric. Listening to your jazz music, brushing your hair, butting into everyone's business but your own. An absent fool without the least bit of interest in your subordinates aside from the fukutaicho you despised."

I was his third seat, no more than a child, left to the whims of the parasite-man for whom my taicho had no love.

Shinji Hirako. The cream of the Rukon crop.

He knew exactly what I was. He knew exact what I was capable of.

I was a menace, the product of seedy streets lined with refuse piled too high in the gutters, amassed like shoddy curbs. The sad houses, matchstick hovels under holey roofs, sheltering nameless faces with wicker hearts, so brittle and so flammable. I had no moral compass, no right and wrong, no greater good.

Only the will to survive. The will to protect my Ran no matter the means, no matter the cost.

"Do you think, Taicho, there will be closure in my death? You want your vengeance—to kill the betrayer who fucked your world," I say, the heady rush of honesty an ecstasy, these words my steel revenge, "but you betrayed me first. I owe you nothing."

I throw the green globe, and we watch as it hits the far wall of the tower. It shatters, producing a toneless cacophony. The distortion rebounding off the seki seki stone, he and I divine splintered truth in the echoes of green falling shards and jaded memories.

There is no heat, no disgust, no horror when he asks me, "Why, Gin? Why didn't you…" In his voice, I hear only guilt and regret.

I stare at him with my remaining eye, wondering how he can ask such an inane question and expect a satisfactory response.

They, all of _them_, have asked every conceivable question. They have demanded answers I will not, cannot give. But more often than not, the tenure of their interrogations is "why."

"Why!" Taicho yells, looking to all the world like a fallen angel bent on finding meaning in this fucked up world. All lit up as his reiatsu razes—his hair almost white, his eyes blazing, his mantle blinding. And there are two lines of shameless driblets marching down his face.

"Why? WHY? WHY!" the walls scream over and over.

Everybody wants to know _why_.

Like my answer will reveal Aizen-taicho's "why."

Like my answer will explain why people had to die and why survivors feel guilty for living. Why they didn't see it coming. Why they did not believe Urahara-taicho. Why they shunned the masked ones.

Like my answer will explain why the streets of heaven look like third world hell.

Why this war was everyone's fault.

"I don't know," I say.

That answer is enough for me. We both know there will be no solace; there can be no escape for the condemned.

I shift my mournful gaze to the fragments of the green globe, once the eye of an arrancar I liked much more than the rest. He, too, had a weakness for hope found in lost little girls in need of a savior.

I wonder what my Ran is doing now. How she lives and who she loves.

Hirako-taicho and I are not so different. We destroy the things we cherish, the people we love. We kill them slowly, each of our mistakes dragging them closer to the death they do not deserve.

So, Taicho and I commune in the Repentance Tower, the white tower of truth and guilt and whys.

**Rust by Gin Ichimaru**

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R&R


End file.
